


Some Nights

by amutemockingjay



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: 1920s, Alternate Universe, Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-10 23:00:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1165607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amutemockingjay/pseuds/amutemockingjay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chicago, 1925. Brought to America for an arranged marriage, Anna finds herself drawn into the dark, unfamiliar world of gangster-run speakeasies, flapper girls, and enough illicit booze to drown in while her sister struggles to hide her emerging powers. Kristoff, naturally, is on the wrong side of Prohibition and not the least bit sorry for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Additional notes at the end. But just a head's up--this a crossover work, with an obscure fandom: Red vs. Blue. Before you run away, let me leave with you this: it's so far from the RvB verse that the only thing you need to know is that the characters in RvB are named for states.

A small coastal village, Norway,  late April 1925

* * *

 

Anna did not hate much in life, but goodbyes were one of the few things that made the list. Looking down at her freshly shined, new leather boots, she could not meet her parents’ eyes as they kissed the top of her head, gave her cloth bundles filled with food for the journey ahead. She knew how much they cared for her, how much they expected her to be happy with this arrangement. And she was!

Anna was happy about everything. Or that was what she told herself.

“Come on, Anna.” Her older sister, in a rare moment of affection, placed one gloved hand on Anna’s cloaked shoulders.

“Goodbye!” her parents called, waving.

Anna raised her head to look them straight in the eye for the first time that morning.

“Goodbye,” she said, quietly.

* * *

Chicago, Illinois, May 1925.

* * *

 

South loved counting money. The crisp bills, their pungent, slightly dirty scent, the slick coolness of the paper in the palm of her hand. And that dreadful moment when the sensation departed her skin and the dollar bills made friends with the sticky wood of the bar.

“Ten, eleven, twelve, seventeen, twenty-two, twenty-three…”

“How many you got there, doll?” The voice, a fake British accent husky with cigarettes—probably his fifteenth that night—made South cringe.

She pushed back a stray lock of blonde hair that had escaped from her beaded headband.

“Give me a damn second, Wyoming!” She called back. “Do you wanna make me lose count?”

“Of course not, my dear South,” came the reply.

“Fucking prick,” she muttered under her breath.

“I heard that.”

“I wasn’t trying to hide it, Wyoming.” She licked her lips, and bit the lower one ever so lightly. “Twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven…”

She didn’t have to hear the door open, or the sound of his shoes against the liquor soaked floors of the speakeasy she called home. She knew when he was there, watching her. A sixth sense, maybe. Or perhaps just a desire to see him so badly that her wishes manifested into reality. But if that was possible, her closet would be filled to the brim with the latest glad rags—silks, satins, sequins, feathers, Chanel and Vionnet and Potou, more dreams than dresses.

 South leaned up against the bar, chin cupped in her hands. “I do believe, sir, that we are closed for business.”

He leaned up against her bar to meet her, so close their lips were millimeters apart. Oh my dear South,” he said, his voice velvet-soft, a whisper indecent to the core, “when has that _ever_ stopped me?”

South had always mocked those sorry girls who went weak for a man, girls who let their garters drop for even the most common slat—that was never her, she would never stoop that low. The other cigarette girls, hell, they’d say what they want, but South Dakota was no common harlot, no sir. But if he asked—and my god did she hope he would—she would hop right over  the bar and let his hands roam past the beaded hemline of her dress, past her knees, her garters, to—

 _No. Focus, South_.

”What can I get you, Hans?”

* * *

Lake Michigan, at the Canadian Border

May, 1925

* * *

 

The shadowy figure waited for him on the other side of the lake, the brim of his fedora obscuring his eyes, as always. Kristoff didn’t like that. He liked being able to see straight into the pupils, see the lies and betrayal and whatever evils lived beneath the surface of every human. Still, business was business and he had to sell someone his ice. And well, if they wanted the more illicit contents in the back of his wagon, they were welcome to do so—if the price was right.

This guy, as shifty as he seemed to be, had the right price.

“How many crates?” Kristoff asked.

“Same as usual. Been a slow week at the Base.”

He staggered unloading the crates, the sound of bottles clinking up against each other made his blood pound and sweat drip down his temples. Illegality was never an issue—he didn’t think much of this Prohibition thing—but to break even a single bottle would be money down the drain. And when dealing with the underworld, you _never_ knew who you could be talking to. Not that Kristoff had ever asked this guy who he belonged to, or what rumrunners he hung around. He only had a name—O’Malley—and O’Malley wasn’t the talkative type.

Money changed hands and Kristoff turned to leave.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” A cigarette hung from O’Malley’s lips and Kristoff wrinkled his nose at the smell.

“Am I?”

“Don’t be smart with me, boy. The ice.”

“Oh. Right. That.” Kristoff scratched the back of his head, an old nervous habit. “My mind was elsewhere.”

Not a lie—he actually had something to do today besides the usual deliveries. Whether he liked it or not, he’d have to cross over the lake to Chicago. Not his idea, not one bit. But when his family volunteered him, he went. This time, to the railway station, to pick up two girls from the Old Country. Sisters, his family had told him. One of them had come over for an arranged marriage, the other…well, he had to give his family points for effort, even if their desperation to get him someone leaked from their pores. 

“Do you think I care, kid?” O’Malley chewed the end of the cig like it was a cigar and Kristoff shuddered with disgust.

“Right, right.” He unloaded the ice and wiped his hands on his pants.

O’Malley tipped his hat to him. “Until next time, kid.”

“Until next time.”

As Kristoff turned away, he saw O’Malley pull the half-smoked cigarette from his mouth, and crush it smartly beneath the heel of his shiny black dress shoes.


	2. Splifficated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anna and Elsa arrive in America; South gets a new mission and Kristoff finds himself in the last place he wants to be.

“Oh, wow.”

Anna stared, wide-eyed, at the noisy chaos that surrounded her. She stood smack dab in the middle of Chicago Central Station and soaked it all in. The people—men in tailored grey or black or navy business suits with bowler hats, women in wide-brimmed straw hats and floral dresses, children in spring coats with teddy bears clutched in candy-sticky hands. All of them rushing past her so quickly she could not catch her breath, all of that babbling in that unfamiliar tongue, English. It seemed like the entire population of her village could fit inside this cavernous hall and they would still be lost amongst everyone else.

“Anna!”

“Huh? What? Who’s talking to me?” Anna whirled around so quickly her braids smacked her in the nose. “Ow!”

A smooth, gloved hand reached for her own, and Anna jumped, startled. She looked up to meet her sister’s eyes with her own.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you, Anna. But perhaps standing right in the middle of the hall is not the best idea,” Elsa said.

“No, no, it’s all right. I mean, you don’t really touch me…nobody really touches me, ever, so I was just, um, surprised. Yes, surprised, that’s the word.”

She knew she was babbling, but couldn’t stop. Surprise was one word for it; Elsa had hardly said a word to her throughout the entire journey. So far, the trip to America was the longest time Anna had ever spent with her sister in the same room—or space, or whatever you wanted to call it.  “Who are we looking for, again, Elsa?”

“His name is Kristoff. He left the village when you were really small.”

Anna stood on her tiptoes, straining to see above the crowd, an impossibility. “How do I know him when I see him?”

Elsa shook her head. “You are asking the wrong person.”

Anna nodded. Conversation over, of course. Her sister did not mince words. Anna studied Elsa with fascination. Back home, her elder sister had almost never come out of her room. They had played together when they were little—Anna could still remember that—but something in Elsa had changed since then. The sister Anna remembered had the same white-blonde hair and bright blue eyes. But now her skin was paler, taut. The hair she had let down in a casual braid down her back was now wound tightly around the back of her head, not a single strand out of place. Muscles tight, cloak buttoned up her neck, her eyes darting back and forth, their gaze never landing on one target. She looked, Anna thought, like she was afraid. Frightened out of her wits. But by what, Anna did not know.

“Miss Anna and Miss Elsa?”

This time, Anna did not startle. Instead she turned around to face the stranger addressing her, only to find herself matched, height-wise, to his chest. She tilted her head back. Blonde hair stuck out in messy bits from a knitted cap that seemed far too warm for the springtime. Brown eyes, square jaw…and a familiarity she could not place. Perhaps because he was from her village. Yes, that had to be it.

“You are Kristoff?”

“Yes,” he said. Words fell from his tongue not with ease, but with a grudge, as if he would rather not speak at all.

“Elsa, he’s here!” Anna bounced on the tips of her toes. “Elsa, come on!”

“I am standing right next to you,” her sister said drily.

“Oh. Right. Yes. I was very much aware of that, of course.” Anna wasn’t entirely certain but she thought she heard a distinctive snort of laughter from Kristoff as he moved out of the train station without another word, leaving the two girls struggling to catch up with his long strides.

When she finally did manage to catch up, she was out of breath, her chest straining the strings of her bodice as she struggled to fill her lungs with air. Naturally, that did not stop her from talking.

“So. Kristoff.”

He gave some sort of grunt in response.

“Kristoff. Kristoff.” She rolled the name over on her tongue. “Kristoff.”

“Yes, that is my name.”

“You’re not much of a talker, are you?”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Don’t really deal much with people.”

“Oh. Well.” Anna bit her lower lip. Behind her, Elsa followed her head down, desperate to avoid the masses of people that jostled all three of them from all sides.

“Is this what Chicago is like all the time, then?” Anna asked. She wasn’t going to give up. He _would_ talk to her properly.

“Dunno.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” They turned the corner, and another, and another. The city business receded slightly to give way to a more residential neighborhood.

“I don’t live here,” Kristoff said.

“Oh.” A pause. “Where do you live, if not here?”

“In Canada. Across the lake.”

Anna nearly jumped out of her boots. “There’s a lake?!” Every part of her filled with longing. Though she had been excited to make the journey—a new adventure was always welcome—she found herself missing the fjord the second she was out of sight from its crystalline waters. “Can we go? Please?”

Kristoff shook his head. “My job is to get you to your fiancé’s house, Miss Anna. Nothin’ more.”

Anna deflated, fighting back the tears that lumped in her throat. “I’m sorry. I …really miss the fjord, that’s all. And please, just call me Anna.”

“All right, just Anna.” There is a rare ghost of a smile, and she can’t help but think how much it improves his looks.

A few more turns and Anna lost track of exactly where they were, only that the homes were so huge, with long, sloping gravel paths and manicured gardens, wrought iron fences and gates to keep out the unwanted. Her mother had told her that Hans’ family was nouveau riche, whatever that meant.

“This one, number 12.” Kristoff stood, awkward, next to the sloping gravel pathway—a circular one.

A shiny black car was parked in front of the high white doorway flanked with columns. This…this could no longer be called a house, in Anna’s mind. It was a palace, with its shiny white walls, architectural swirls and flounces that reminded her of icing on a cake. Nothing like the smooth, cozy grey of the home she had left behind. The longing that overcame her ran so deep that her chest ached. Her lungs seemed to hold no air at all, and she closed her eyes, forcing herself to breathe slowly, to ignore the rapid pounding of her heart.  She counted to twenty at a snail’s pace, ignoring the sounds of crunching gravel, slammed doors, and footsteps.

And when she opened her eyes again, both her sister and Kristoff were gone. She stood alone.

* * *

 

South was late. Again.

There was no particular reason for her tardiness—she had gone back to her dump of a flat that she shared with her twin, relieved to find him not home. Maybe he’d anger the wrong person—or even the Director—and he wouldn’t come at all.

She wouldn’t be sorry, not in the slightest.

South glanced at her watch. Five minutes until her shift started, and she wasn’t anywhere near the Base. Showing up one second past that simply was not an option; she would have to answer to someone more terrifying than O’Malley, and as careless as she was, she wouldn’t dare cross _that_ line. This left one option: pearls clattering, two-toned heels pinching her toes, she made a run for it down the street.

“Ow, ow, fucking ouch—“ She could practically feel the blisters on her ankles popping, blood soaking the back of her stockings.

Maybe it was the noise of the pearls and heels and swearing, or the way she couldn’t properly balance while running in heels, or the (several) nips from her brother’s flask she’d swiped before leaving, but pedestrians gave South a fairly wide berth as she ran. All except for one.

“Get out of the way!”

South sure as hell was in no position to stop moving, but this dumb Dora was either deaf or splifficated already—it was only four in the afternoon, so South, had she been in a more generous mood, would have given the girl points for sheer moxie.  There was nothing she could do. Flapper collided with stranger, and South made a painful landing on the cement.

“Didn’t I tell you to move outta my damn way?” South growled at the stranger.

The girl looked at her in utter confusion. Her burnt-orange hair was long and kept in two braids; her skirts nearly down to her ankles. What century did this girl live in? South brushed dirt and pebbles off of her knees, and examined the tear down the side of one sheer stocking.

“These are silk. Does that mean anything to you?” South asked, and the girl blinked, the same look of confusion written all over her features.

“I am sorry, I do not understand,” said the girl, each word slow, deliberate, and not in English.

A tiny, unwanted bubble of homesickness welled up inside South’s chest. She still understood Norwegian after twelve years in America. Maybe her speaking was a little rusty, but evidently this girl was fresh off the boat.

“Fresh off the boat, I take it.” The words were heavy on South’s tongue, her vocabulary rusted away after years of disuse. Apparently, though, they had made enough sense, as the girl’s face brightened considerably at the sound of her mother tongue.

“Everyone keeps saying that,” the girl said. “I don’t understand why.”

South laughed. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

“I am sorry about knocking you over,” the girl said. “My sister says I have two left feet. Is there anything I can do for you, to repay you?”

South checked her watch. Eight minutes late. Goddamnit. She sighed. “If you want to be of use, you might as well come with me, and explain to my boss exactly why I am late.”

The girl hopped to her feet and offered South her hand. “Certainly.”

South took her hand and staggered to her feet. “I’m South Dakota. And you are?”

“Anna.”

“Well, Anna, we better get going before you ruin my _other_ stocking.”

“Fair enough.”

*****

The club was almost set-up by the time South pulled Anna through the back door. Wyoming was waiting for her at the bar, fixing himself a pre-drinking drink.

“Hey, hands off my hooch, unless you’re gonna pay for it. And you never do.” South hopped over the bar and stole the bottle out of Wyoming’s hands.

“I do not think,” he said with a sniff, “you are in any place to talk, South. Especially not considering your tardiness.”

“Do you think I care?” South shifted her weight from foot to foot and motioned to Anna to join her behind the bar. The girl hesitated, still taking in the speakeasy with bright, wide eyes. “And can you please, Wyoming, for the love of God, quit with your British accent? Everyone knows you’re from South Africa.”

“That is an egregious lie,” Wyoming replied. “That being said, the Director wants to see you in his office. Now.”

“He can wait ten minutes,” South said, pulling Anna by the hand. “I gotta get her some decent clothes. Besides, it’s a woman’s prerogative to make a man wait.”

“Your funeral.” Wyoming sauntered away, lighting up a cigarette.

“Was that your boss?” Anna asked, her fingers tracing the rows upon rows of bottles, fascinated.

“No,” South said. “The Director wants to see me, alone. But we’re getting you some decent clothes first. Come with me.”

Past the bar, behind the small stage for the band, South disappeared through one dark hallway and another, peeling paint and the sound of laughter. South pushed open a splintered door with her foot, where a bunch of brightly dressed girls sat at makeshift dressing tables covered in make-up.

“I’ll let you borrow something of Carolina’s,” South said to Anna. “If you’re going to stay for a little while, you can’t show up in…well, that.”

Anna put her hands on her hips. “Something wrong with what I’m wearing?”

Another red-head leaned back in her chair, her eyelids covered in kohl, thin wrists dangling with obsidian bangles. “There is everything wrong with what that appleknocker is wearing,” she said in English.

“Shut it, Tex,” South snapped. “Nobody asked you.”

“Nobody has to.” Tex applied a perfect coat of oxblood lipstick and grabbed a white feather boa draped carelessly across another girl’s table, storming away.

South reached her own table—messy, covered in glittery headbands, false eyelashes, and cigarette butts. She saw Anna wince.

“Sit down, Anna,” South said, and the girl obeyed. “Let’s see what we’ve got to work with.”

“I can help, South.” Tiny, bird-like Carolina sat down next to South. She pulled a hairbrush out of her drawer and began to brush out her shiny, thick black hair.

“That’d be jake, ‘Lina. I gotta meet with the Director about some hogwash or another, I don’t really care. But this is Anna. She’s fresh off the boat, never been anywhere—so I told her I’d show her a good time. I think she’s about your size?”

Carolina nodded. “I’ll pin up her hair, do a full make-up if she doesn’t mind. Does she speak English?”

South shook her head. “Not a whit.” She turned to Anna. “I have to go meet with the Director now. But this is my friend Carolina. She doesn’t speak any Norwegian, but she’ll teach you some English if you want, and show you a good time.”

At this, Anna smiled. “As long as I get home in time for supper. I have to meet my fiancé.”

A fiancé? South shuddered at the thought. A police-dog was definitely not something she was interested in, not ever. Oh well. Anna’s loss. “Absolutely,” South said, leaving the two of them behind.

****

The Director’s office was the nicest room in the entire speakeasy—and the most terrifying. Freshly painted, the walls were scarlet, the lights low, obscuring his face from South’s vision. His impeccable Southern accent, the smell of the cigars he smoked, the tumbler of bourbon: if South wasn’t so aware of what he was capable of, she’d laugh at his inability to be fresh. And who even smoked cigars nowadays?

“South Dakota.” The Director stubbed out his cigar in a black marble ashtray. “Please, sit.” He indicated one of the leather chairs—stiff backed and uncomfortable—that faced his desk.

South took a seat, and the Director refreshed his glass. She looked at the liquor longingly; it was five o’clock somewhere, and she had yet to have a proper drink.

“How is your new assignment working for you, South Dakota?”

South resisted the urge to bite her nails and bow her head. Instead, she stared at his shadow face on, feeling as though she were speaking to a ghost. “Fine, sir.”

“Nothing to report? None of those sub-committee types wandering around, making trouble?”

“No sir, nothing to report.”

“Excellent. I have something else in mind for you. You are not to tell anyone, understand?”

“Not even my brother?”

“Especially not your brother.”

South sat up even straighter in her seat. How she wanted to throw her arms around the Director! Finally, _finally_ , getting a chance to do something completely on her own, instead of being paired with her twin for the umpteenth time. She could never escape North, no matter how hard she tried to stand out on her own. But the Director recognized her talents, her place, set her aside for the praise and acclaim.

 _Take that, North_.

“Washington has been assigned to clean up a little…mess of mine. Something that has been getting out of hand.”

South listened, wide-eyed. The Director did not have to explain what sort of mess Wash would be taking care of. Any other rival gang was a mess, a slime over Chicago. And the Director would certainly show them who they ought to show the proper respect to.

“However.” The Director polished off the last dregs of bourbon in the glass, “I suspect Wash has not been following orders. That is where you come in.”

“You want me to do his job?” South could hardly believe it.

The Director laughed, harsh and mocking. “No, silly girl. I want you to…befriend Wash. Find out what is going on. Then I will send in a real man to finish the job. Understood?”

South hung her head. Of course. That was all she was good for—looking pretty, bringing in customers, “befriending” various men at the bar, encouraging them to spend more and more and more.

“Understood, sir. Always.”

* * *

 

O’Malley had gone missing, and Kristoff was displeased. He had, apparently, not bothered to deliver the liquor or the ice, so Kristoff would have to do that himself—on his own dime, of course. Bastard.

“Should have never trusted him,” Kristoff muttered under his breath as he loaded crate after crate through the back door.

Exhausted and sweating, the barman, some British guy, had asked if he’d like to come upstairs for a drink. While Kristoff normally would have said no—too many people, too little space, too much noise—he figured if the club was going to take his liquor for free, he might as well partake of a little. A decision he regretted as soon as he entered the tiny speakeasy. To his right, the bar took up most of the wall, what little of it there was. To the left, a smattering of red-clothed tables piled high with discarded drinks, hats, and flapper’s sparkly accessories, things he wasn’t even sure of. In the back, a small stage accommodated a band. Kristoff winced; the music was awful but everyone seemed too drunk to notice. In the center, a throng of flappers laughed, desperate to be witty, shared cigarettes (but never drinks) and went from man to man in fast paced, heel clacking sort of dancing. If you could call it dancing. Kristoff wasn’t sure you could, but nobody asked him his opinion.

“Kristoff!”

“What?”

He turned around in the direction of the voice—female, slurred, and accented. That was when he spotted her in the crowd, moving towards him at a stumbling pace. She couldn’t walk in the two-toned heels she was wearing, and it was evident.

“Anna?”

“Yes, it’s me!” The red-head threw herself at him, and he caught her. She smelled of gin and tonic water. “I am so glad to see you!”

“I do not know how to respond to that.”

Kristoff took a long look at her. Her braids were gone, her long hair pulled back, pinned, and manipulated into a false bob. Her green eyes disappeared under layers of smoky eye makeup and false eyelashes. Her cheeks were flushed with rouge and drink, and she wore a far too sheer, far too short, knee-revealing dress made out of—well, he didn’t know what. Something shiny and beaded and fringed and what on earth had happened to her?

“That’s all right! Aren’t you having a good time, Kristoff! I am having a good time!” The inebriated girl tried to twirl around in her dress and failed, lurching to the side and turning on one ankle. Kristoff grabbed her by the waist to steady her and she laughed, an unstable sound. “I got a new dress and new friends and it has been, how do you say—totally jake?” She said the last two words in English and beamed. “I am already learning English.”

Kristoff sighed. “That’s great, Anna. But maybe you should get home.”

At the word, the girl’s glassy eyes widened and filled with tears. “Home isn’t here. I don’t know where—where—“ The tears overflowed and spilled down her cheeks. “I want to go home.”

_God damn it._

He may be part of a family of love experts—or so they claimed—but he had no idea what to do with a crying woman. “Please, please don’t cry, Anna.”

She nodded, and turned to an abandoned drink left on the table.

“And don’t drink that!” Kristoff pushed the alcohol to one side. “You’re drunk enough as it is.”

“Drunk?” She laughed through the tears. Definitely unstable. He was trapped in a speakeasy with an unstable, weepy woman, and had no one to blame but himself for it. “I’m not drunk!” She pushed herself away from him, hands on her hips. “How dare you say that!”

“Yes, yes how dare I, uh-huh…” Kristoff looked desperately for an inconspicuous exit. There was one—a fire exit—a few steps away.

“I’ve never been drunk in my life, not one bit…” Anna babbled, and Kristoff swooped in, lifting her up and over his shoulder, fireman style.

“What are you doing?!” Anna shrieked over the din.

People were staring. It was now or never. Kristoff ducked through the fire exit while she fruitlessly pounded her fists against his back.

“Get me down from here, Kristoff, or I swear—“

“You’re not in a position to swear anything,” he said. “Now I’m getting you back to where you belong. No arguments.”

“But—“

“That an argument, Anna.”

"No it's not!"

"And there's another one." 

"I hate you," she muttered darkly as he walked through the maze of streets to Hans' mansion, leaving her on the front stoop. This was not his world, and he had no desire to be anywhere other than his cabin next to the lake with Sven. Maybe fixing his guitar strings. Yes, that sounded nice. 

"Glad we're on the same page," he said, turning his back and walking down the gravel drive. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a historical note--one of the reasons why Chicago was so soaked in alcohol during Prohibition was because liquor was smuggled across the lakes from Canada. Hence why Kristoff lives there.   
> Also, my Carolina departs from RvB canon dramatically because what they did with her character in the show was stupid.   
> Comments are, as always, love.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a general note: I am a historian at heart (once a History major always a History major) so this should all be historically accurate to the best of my knowledge and research ability. If I get something wrong, please let me know. I am also fairly fluent in flapper speak, so those words will pop up now and again in their correct context. Let me know if it's too confusing, and I'll define the words down here in additional chapters. Comments are appreciated, as always.  
> Much thanks to the lovely Martienne for her read-through, suggestions, grammar fixes, and general awesomeness. Her fics are amazing and everyone should read them (not like I'm biased or anything).


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